Nibiru, a Science Fiction RPG of Lost Memories

Nibiru Update #42 - August Update! Production Ends, Printing Begins!
over 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 10:53:47 PM

Hello all!

It's that time of the month again, and it's a special one! The end of August finds us giving the book its finishing touches before going to print, and I'm happy to say that we've reached the end line :) I've taken some holidays this month to see my dad, who lives in the other side of the world and came to London to visit, and to do some iteration on the Corebook's adventure. Our current deadlines for editorial job (as well as an extra, super cool full page ilustration I managed to sneak in!) are set for the 5th of September. This means that then, the book will be effectively done, and I'll be getting it nice and clean to send that PDF to y'all, as well as to the printers (that goes together with the Narrators' Screen!).

Making Nibiru come together has been a huge undertaking, both in terms of the energy put into it, the financial investment, and all of the learning that has required. It's taken a while (about three years now), but at the same time that has allowed me to iterate and see the text grow and get polished with time. This is super important as I think that most role playing games don't get the luxury of iterating: that is, going back twice or thrice over the text to refine it and to add new ideas, letting them sit and growing along with you.

This is why I took a bit longer to finalize the Corebook's adventure. I think corebook adventures have a very important role to play within a game line, in that they're supposed to present the big picture of what the game is about. Granted, it was not a super simple process with Nibiru, given that we tackle lots of big, ambitious themes: from nature and its relationship with humanity, to society and how its shaped by the environment, to identity and how our memories define it. At some point, however, I think we struck gold with some of the themes, and I even had Mahea go back for one last, full page artpiece to ilustrate a reeeally cool bit you'll see in the adventure. You'll tell me when you play it :)

As promised in the last update, I'm also putting out that preview link for the last of the setting chapters, for Penumbra, in the update that follows this one (which only backers will get to see). We had feedback reg. hyphenation, which you'll see this chapter addressing :) I'll go back and correct that one the rest during this week, so do let me know if you have any particular comments since this will be the last week we'll have to polish stuff!

 Yuri has done again an excellent work with the Penumbraic map. I've spoken about these before, but the main concept is for these to give you a picture not just of what we've described in the text, but also of everything that lies beyond humanity's known habitats, inviting you and your players to give meaning to the strange structures and the lost hallways you can see in there:

I'm also happy to let you know we'll be once again at Dragonmeet in London this year :) so do come to say hi! And let us know what you thought of the new preview chapter. Next update should catch us during the printing process (or at the end of it if we get lucky!).

See you around, Vagabonds!

Nibiru Update #41 - July Update, Cover Art, and Dice Shipped!
almost 5 years ago – Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 03:03:45 AM

Hello Backers!

We've taken a bit more time on the Narrators Chapter and the adventure between last month and this one. We are still editing these since I wanted to make sure that I got to iterate to make sure we get a better product. For those who don't know, iteration is basically a part of the creative process by which, once you finish a draft, you let a bit of time pass and come back to do a full review. This is important for Nibiru since it helps us note things we hadn't seen before, and to make writing more focused and sharp. Among some of these corrections are amendments to how paragraphs break (that was raised by y'all, so thanks for the feedback!) and tweaking the final adventure to make it the best starting point we can conjure :)

One thing I probably forgot to mention before is that, when it comes to other products that are part of many of your pledges (particularly the adventures for Umbra, Penumbra and Antumbra), two of those are done and laid out, while one is halfway through. These are already outlined though, so that one remaining should be done in right after we finish the current revisions for the Narrators Chapter and the corebook adenture.

On to other stuff... the cover art is finished! Here it is:

The dice are also finished and are already on their way to our UK warehouse :) Here's a video the folks at Shenzhen Runxinda sent through showing the packaging:

Next up and heading to print is the Narrators' screen :) I'll confess I actually don't tend to use screens in play, but I thought "hey, how can I make it more appealing than just a piece of cardboard with rules written in?" and decided to add a transparent pocket in there. Even if I know a game's rules by heart, this sort of thing will always be useful since most of us keep some sort of scribbled paper (or several!) with annotations for the game, so having that there is pretty cool!

One other interesting bit of functionality added to this is that I'm printing the Nibiru adventures in a smaller format, specifically to make them fit in the pocket. The text in the adventures is pretty straight to the point, so you won't have to do much page flipping, making it ideal to fit in the screen's pocket :)

Oh, and to add up, Joaquin has finished the Science of Nibiru annex :) which is also being edited along with the Narrators' Chapter and the adventure.

That's it for now folks! If you have any questions, let me know, and we'll see you in the next update!

New Preview Chapters! And handy list of links :)
almost 5 years ago – Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 02:28:39 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Nibiru Update #40 - June Update, Dice in Production, and Lotsa Previews!
almost 5 years ago – Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 10:43:55 PM

 Hello backers!

It’s been a while :) I’ve been working to finish the last bits for the book, and I’m happy to say editing has been finalized for all but the Narrators’ chapter and the adventure; the rest of the book is laid out and (with the exception of the map of Penumbra and the world map, which are currently being worked on by Yuri), all the rest is done.

Which brings me to one piece of art we haven’t talked about much, since it’s only now that is being brought to completion. I’m talking about the cover of course! This one is on Masashi Kageyama (https://www.artstation.com/masashikageyama) who does astounding, very immersive works, and is giving shape to the most important piece of all. This one will feature an encounter between a Vagabond and one of the Harbingers, some of the strangest AIs of the station (this one you’ll recognise once you start immersing yourself in the lore!). Check out the following sketches:

Not a final! 

Production-wise, I’m also happy to report that the dice are already in production, and hopefully should be delivered to the warehouse by the end of this month! That’s pretty sweet time-wise, and with that done it’s time to focus on the Narrators’ Screen and the finishing touches on the Corebook. The final bits will pertain the printed adventures and the maps, which take much less time to produce.

Speaking about immersing yourself on the lore, and considering that the editing work is finalized on most chapters, I’m excited to let backers know that they will shortly be able to preview three new chapters, including the Torus annex we unlocked :O wohooo! These you’ll be able to see in the backer-exclusive update that follows this one :) I’ll also compile the rest of the chapters there for ease of access. With all of this you should have enough info to really immerse into the world!

Thanks for sticking by, and see you in the next update :)

Federico

Nibiru Update #39 - May Looms!
about 5 years ago – Sat, May 04, 2019 at 02:32:54 PM

Hello everyone!

I wanted to give you a quick update regarding three important factors.

First of all, we might experience a short delay in shipments due to the delivery times of some of the items, in particular the Narrators Screen. This was very likely due to the fact that we blasted out every stretch goal, which meant that even if we do have everything laid out on time, some of these items take longer to produce (the Narrators Screens, for example, could take 7 to 11 weeks to produce and deliver, which is almost certainly going to delay the process for a few weeks!). Even with that, I'm confident everyone will get the PDF content during July.

I was talking to one of you the other day about what generally happens behind closed doors during these projects. Nibiru was not without its hurdles; we had two of our main three artists face severe health issues that prevented them from continuing with the project, which meant we had to bring new talent on board. I'm happy to say that the way we got it organised meant we continued to get awesome art delivered, with almost zero impact on our timeframe. This is one of the reasons why, before the Kickstarter launched, I was pretty mysterious with the whole project launch date and all, but I think it was for the best :) I'm very thankful for everyone's support and your patience!

Now to get onto cooler things... 

One thing I started to see as we briefed the later half of our art pieces was that the color palette of a huge chunk of the book is built around blue hues rather than the orange-reds we were aiming for. I did a test and posted a "blue" rework of our layout to get some feedback back then in Twitter, and got great responses, so... *drumroll* the book is now laid out in blue. And to be honest, it looks effin gorgeous; much more striking than before, and much more in tune with the majority of our art:

The blue tones we used also are not *any* kind of blue. These are the complete opposite in the color wheel than the orange-redish tones we were using before, which mean that even with the first batch of pieces, there's some great color synergy going on.

Third and last, I've opened our late pledge stage, so all of those who didn't manage to back during the holidays can now do so until the end of May via our BackerKit page :) 

We should have a set of pieces delivered this week which would allow us to send a pre-proofread version of the Ashur and Core sectors chapters, and we might also be able to sneak in the pre-edits Umbra chapter. We've also started working on two final pieces with the amazing  Anastasia Balakchina, who's done ilustrations for the GODS RPG and is currently sketching up an impressive spread opener for the Narrators' chapter:

I'm also laying out the cross section y'all unlocked. Mark Zhang did an amazing work on this one, and I love how immersive it can feel to have all the interiors showing. Games along the Torus can get pretty cool with this sort of aid, specially when playing the themes of cabin fever and given the important social implications that we've given the barges in the setting:

Until next time! See you soon Vagabonds~